Episode Transcript
Proverbs chapter 12, God willing, will be expounding verses 8 and 9.
Proverbs chapter 12, verse 8 and 9.
I see my sweet mother-in-law is watching tonight.
Wonderful.
The title of our message tonight is "Commendation."
Don't forget about our white elephant gift exchange.
That's going to be December 1st after our meal.
And there's something else, sugar?
The dinner afterward.
Huh?
Dinner after church is what I meant.
Yeah, dinner after church and then white elephant after that.
The title of the message tonight is "Our Commendation."
And we start off with the words, "A man shall be commended."
A man shall be commended.
And that gives us an opportunity to just pause right here on those words.
A man shall be commended.
To be commended literally means in the Hebrew to shine.
To shine.
Sometimes if we talk about someone doing something really good, it's going to make them look good.
We'll say, "That's really going to make you shine," you know.
And that's what this word here means, commended.
A man shall be commended.
God didn't create man to be unnoticed.
He didn't create man to occupy the world like some nocturnal beast that walks the earth under the cover of darkness.
That's not how God made us to be.
God created man to shine.
Sometimes we don't understand humility.
Humility is a wonderful thing, but humility doesn't mean depressed.
Humility means to be in your place.
And when you're in your place under God, then you're above all things that are in the world.
And God has given Christ a name that's above every name.
And He seated us together in heavenly places in Christ.
And so a man was created to shine.
1 Corinthians 11, 7a, 1 Corinthians 11, verse 7a says, "For a man indeed ought not to cover his head for as much as he is the image and glory of God."
We would think that would be blasphemy if we did not have this in Scripture and we just said, "Well, we're the image and glory of God."
We'd think, "Oh, that's terrible.
That's blasphemous.
That's so proud for you to say so."
No, it's not.
That's man's position.
He's the image and glory of God.
Here's a kingdom truth for you tonight.
God made men to shine.
God made men to shine.
We call celebrities stars, don't we?
Why do we call them stars?
Because they shine in the world's eyes.
They shine with vainglory.
But we were made to shine not with vainglory, we were made to shine with God's glory as a lamp shines with the light that burns inside of it.
My grandparents used to have old kerosene lanterns and that lamp shined with the light that burned inside it.
And we're that way.
The Bible says we have this treasure in earthen vessels.
We're earthen lamps.
Remember Gideon?
He had those pots and he broke and those lights shined out of it.
But that's what we are.
We're made to burn or to shine as a lamp with that light burning inside it.
But notice what the Scripture doesn't say.
The Scripture doesn't say a man shall commend.
It says a man shall be commended.
One's active, the other's passive.
And we weren't made to commend ourselves.
We were made to be commended by God.
Now we can receive commendation from our fellow men of course.
I praise Brother Shepherd and recognized the good Bible teaching tonight.
That was a commendation.
But that commendation is recognizing the grace of God on him.
It's not a carnal commendation.
It's not a commendation outside of God but on account of him.
And we give God the glory for that.
And we would fear to do otherwise.
But when we receive this kind of commendation, the rightful kind of commendation from men, it is in fact the commendation of God.
Because it's on account of God.
It gives God the glory.
We recognize it's God's grace bestowed upon men through which his glory shines.
So when we receive this commendation, we shine the glory of God.
Because commendation is a form of glory.
It's a form of praise bestowed on someone on God's behalf.
Now the world also commends.
The thing is the world commends fools and it shines vainglory upon them.
But the true commendation that's bestowed upon men is, look back in your text now, according to wisdom.
See that?
The world commends fools and shines vainglory upon them.
But true commendation is upon a man is according to his wisdom.
Wisdom causes men to shine with the glory of God.
I'm going to repeat that again.
Wisdom causes men to shine with the glory of God.
Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 1b.
Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 1b says, "A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine."
That's pretty neat, isn't it?
A man's wisdom.
We were God created us to shine.
And a man's wisdom, now we know where wisdom comes from, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God."
A man's wisdom that he receives from God makes that man's face to shine God's glory.
So it says, "A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed."
That boldness, that sternness of his face.
Wisdom is the flame that burns in the heart of man and shines God's light to the world.
A man's wisdom makes his face shine with God's glory, and it changes the countenance of his face from bold and cold to brilliant and burning with the grace of God.
The Hebrew word translated wisdom here has the idea of a man being successful due to the understanding of his heart.
A man being successful due to the understanding of his heart.
In the Gospel of Luke chapter 16 verses 1 through 10, Jesus spoke a fascinating parable, one that makes you kind of wrinkle your eyes up when you read it, and think, "What is that all about?"
And we're going to read it tonight, but he spoke a parable about a man who was commended according to his wisdom.
We get to watch it in real life, sort of, in verse 16 verse 1, "And he said also unto his disciples, 'There was a certain rich man which had a steward.'"
We're all stewards by the way.
"And the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods."
We've all wasted our master's goods by the way.
"And he called him and said unto him, 'How is it that I hear this of thee, given account of thy stewardship?
For thou mayest be no longer steward.'"
In other words, get your books together.
I'm giving you your notice.
You're going to be terminated.
But go ahead and get your books together and we're going to square the books before you go.
"Then the steward said within himself, he starts thinking to himself, 'What shall I do?
For my Lord taketh away from me the stewardship.'"
In other words, man I've had a really good job here.
He says, "I cannot dig."
I'm physically incapable of digging.
"To beg I am ashamed."
I've got too much pride for that.
And he says, "I know what I'll do."
He says, "I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses."
He said, "I've got an idea, so that when I get put out of my stewardship and I lose my housing and my benefits here, I've got an idea where I can make a place for me to stay in other houses."
And so here's what he does.
"So he called every one of his Lord's debtors unto him."
Now this is why he still has control of the books.
This is why he's still a steward.
He calls his Lord's debtors to him.
He says unto the first, "How much oweth thou unto my Lord?"
And he said, "In hundred measures of oil."
And he said unto him, "Take thy bill," or take your checkbook, "and sit down quickly and write fifty."
He goes, "Tell you what I'm going to do."
Right?
And I remember I called the hospital one time.
This was years ago.
They don't do this very much anymore, at least not with me.
I don't know why.
I just don't get the breaks.
But I called the hospital once and I owed them some money for a procedure that we had just had.
And they said, "Well now, tell you what, Mr.
Fulton.
If you'll just go ahead and pay cash instead of going on the payment plan, we'll give you a cash discount."
I said, "How much discount?"
And they told me, I said, "I'll take it."
Paid it off right then.
And I got me a discount.
They were happy.
I was happy.
Now this is what this man's doing.
He owes his boss a hundred measures of oil.
And if it's anything like olive oil is today, that's pretty expensive.
And he says, "Well, you owe a hundred.
I'll tell you what.
Let's make it fifty and we'll just give you a discount."
And so, boy, he's going to take him up on that.
What a deal.
Verse seven, "Then said he to another, 'And how much oweest thou?'
And he said, 'And a hundred measures of wheat.'
He said unto him, 'Take thy bill and write four score.'"
I think I can get eighty out of this guy.
He said a fifty.
So he does.
Verse eight, "And the Lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely."
So what did he do?
His master now, he was owed a hundred measures of oil and a hundred measures of wheat.
And now he's got fifty measures of oil and eighty measures of wheat.
His master is happy.
That's a whole lot more than he had before.
The debtors are happy.
That's a whole lot less that they owed than they did before.
Everybody's happy and now he works this deal out so he can go and live in the debtors' house for so long of a time, whenever he gets fired.
And the, his Lord commended that unjust steward.
He says, "Because he had done wisely, for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."
In other words, that unjust steward not doing things because he cared for his Lord.
If he did, he wouldn't be fired in the first place.
But simply because he had enough sense to say, "You know what?
I need to make preparations for my future."
And so Jesus said that that unjust steward in many ways is wiser than a lot of the children of light in his generation because he made use of the things he had for the things to come.
And so Jesus, taking that basic principle, says to his disciples, "And I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations."
And that the steward in Jesus' parables had wasted his master's goods.
He lost his job and now he's got a place to live in these people's homes and the master is praising him for his shrewdness because the steward had enough sense to make use of what he had in the present to prepare for his comfort in the future.
He had enough sense to make use of what he had in the present to prepare for his comfort in the future.
We all have things in the present.
Jesus said we're to lay up treasures in heaven.
How do we do that?
With the things we have in the present.
You don't lay up treasures for heaven when you get into heaven.
You do that now.
And Jesus was using this as an example for us, the children of light, to encourage us to use the carnal things that we have in this present day to lay up treasures for ourselves in eternity so we can be commended by God for doing so.
So we can hear him say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
Not unjust stewards, but just stewards who made wise use of what God had put in their possession at the time while they were here in this world.
So those people will receive the commendation of our Lord, if you look back down to your text now, but he that is of a perverse heart, that's the other person.
Not a man that has wisdom, but a man who has a perverse heart.
And that person will not be commended for his wisdom because his heart does not prepare for eternity.
When his earthly home fails him, he'll have no home to go to.
But he'll be cast into outer darkness and there'll be weeping and dashing of teeth.
The understanding of his heart, the Scripture says, is perverse.
Meaning it's bent from God, it's bent in the wrong direction, bent away from God, not caring for God's will and not shining God's glory.
And that person shall not be commended, look back in your text, but shall be despised.
And that word despised means disrespected, if you were to look it up in a Hebrew dictionary.
He'll be disrespected by God, he'll be disrespected by godly men.
Genesis 4 verse 4 and 5a says, "And Abel, he also brought the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof, and the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.
But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect."
Cain was despised by God.
King Saul was also despised instead of being commended because he foolishly disobeyed God.
1 Samuel chapter 13 verse 13, "And Samuel said to Saul, 'Thou hast done foolishly, thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee, for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever.'"
Look what you could have had, look how God would have blessed you in the future, had you only followed God's will.
He said forever, "establish thy kingdom upon Israel forever."
I believe God would have established that covenant with Saul had he not disobeyed, but he couldn't so he did it with David.
Now a fool will praise a fool and despise a wise man.
So we've been talking about God not respecting someone and godly people not respecting someone.
A man of a perverse heart shall be despised, but a fool will praise a fool, he'll commend a fool and he'll despise a wise man, he'll disrespect the wise man.
Such as verse 9, "He that is despised hath a servant."
So a fool will despise a man who is successful in life and that's what we see here, a man that has a servant, which shows that he's higher than middle class.
He's someone that's not just working for himself, but he has people working for him.
And he's been very industrious and very wise in his conduct in life.
And he's doing well for himself, yet he's despised for it.
And people will resent people who are successful.
Have you noticed that?
They will resent people, they will even hate people who are successful.
Have you ever noticed how certain politicians disrespect wealthy people?
They may be wealthy themselves, but they're going to publicly disrespect other people, especially if they were truly successful.
If you ride somebody's coattails and people throw money at you, then that's not success.
You're involved in corruption, but people who actually get out, use their brain, work hard, outwork the competition and do well, people despise those kind of people.
And they try to make themselves, a lot of the politicians, they want to say, "Well, this man's a billionaire, this man's this, he's got money and me, I'm middle class, I'm like you."
"I'm a middle class person, I come from a poor background, I don't have money.
If you'll vote for me, I'll fix the greatest economy in the world."
Like that makes any sense at all.
If a candidate doesn't know how to make money at their house, how are they going to know to make money at the White House?
He that's faithful in little be faithful in much, but if you fail in little, you're going to fail in much, which we've seen.
People despise though other people's success, and so the candidates draw on that.
Because there's this natural tendency that we have that if we see someone succeed, we want to find a reason why they succeeded that we can blame them for their success to make our failure not look so bad.
Man, if someone's successful, man, more power to them.
Plob that person, thank God for giving them the wisdom to be able to do that.
Don't despise someone because they have more than you do.
People despise other people's success, but success is a good thing.
It's better to be a success than a failure.
So the Bible says, "He that is despised and hath a servant," look back in your text now, "is better than he that honoreth himself and lacketh bread."
And this whole opens up a whole rich can of doctrine for us here.
He that is despised and has a servant is better than the person who honors himself, who toots his own horn and doesn't have any food on the table.
It's better to be mocked by the world and have enough food for yourself and a servant besides than to brag on yourself and have nothing to eat.
That just makes sense, doesn't it?
God says that's better.
Here's a kingdom truth.
It's better to be despised and full than to be honored and empty.
It's better to be despised and full, F-U-L-L, than to be honored and empty.
And that kingdom truth is not primarily applicable to the physical bread, but it is primarily applicable to the spiritual bread.
It's also applicable to the physical bread, but ultimately it's applicable to the spiritual bread.
It's far better to be despised and full of God's wisdom and the bread of life than to be honored by the world and empty.
It's better to be despised and right than to be honored and wrong.
It's better to be hated by the world and on your way to heaven than to be praised by the world and on your way to hell.
The Bible says in Psalms chapter 10 verse 3, Psalms chapter 10 verse 3 says, "For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous whom the Lord abhorreth."
The wicked boast, they praise, they glory, they commend their own heart's desire.
Not God's.
Jesus said, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done."
I want God's will in my life.
God's will be done.
The wicked though, they boast in their own heart's desire and they bless the covetous people whom the Lord abhors.
They bless people that disgust God.
Wicked people praise the people the Lord's disgusted with.
Christian, never trade your bread for earthly praise.
It's better to be full and despised than to be honored and empty.
Never trade your bread for earthly praise.
Never trade heavenly wisdom for earthly honor.
Now there's a lot of pressure when it comes to that.
I mean we want to be praised.
We want people's approval and some people are very good at flattering people to get their way.
This morning there was an employee at the courthouse that is in purchasing which I have no part of.
But she was out doing something a little extra that she saw.
She's always doing extra stuff.
She's a really, really good employee.
And when I saw her doing what I know nobody else has noticed but her and she just trying to do something just to make the place better.
And I said, "You're a good employee Lisa, a good employee."
And she said, "Now if only you were my boss."
She said, "I don't come to work for the money, I come to work for the praise."
I said, "Well I've got plenty of words of affirmation I can give you."
But she was serious.
She wasn't working for the money.
She only works part time.
She just wants to be appreciated.
She just likes the approval.
And if someone is geared that way they can be manipulated by the world.
A lot of women get manipulated by men that way.
And they can be manipulated by giving them words of affirmation, words of praise.
And in order to get that fulfillment they will end up going a direction that God does not want them to go.
Make... praise is great.
We were created to be praised.
Make sure you get your commendation from the right person though.
We want God's commendation because the wicked commend the people the Lord of horror.
Wicked people praise the people the Lord is disgusted with.
Don't seek the blessing of the wicked.
He that seeks the bread shall inherit the praise.
He that seeks the praise shall inherit the hunger.
I should have made that a kingdom truth but I didn't.
It's an awful good quote.
How about a Fulton fact?
Would that be okay?
It's a kingdom truth.
It's a biblical truth.
He that seeks the bread shall inherit the praise.
If you're going after the bread, if you're going after getting that which is truly full, true fullness, remember Jesus said, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled."
Not blessed are they who hunger and after praise.
If you hunger and thirst after praise you're going to be empty.
You hunger and thirst after righteousness you're going to be full.
He that seeks the bread shall inherit praise.
They'll receive the commendation of God but he that seeks the praise they're going to inherit the hunger.
Feed on your bread of life and let this starving world mock you all they want to and as I was studying for this I couldn't help but think about the Jeremy kids and the children and my grandchildren who also go to church here and those who are like Marley who are watching online and others.
Just thinking of the pressure that they're going to have in their youth especially as they get outside their parents' home and there's going to be all kinds of pressure to conform.
I can hear people, "You were homeschooled.
You were sheltered.
You don't know much about life."
And all the other things that I've heard people say and none of them are true.
But here we suggest this to you and then they begin to praise them as they do something wrong.
But don't do that.
Don't seek the praise.
You seek the bread and you'll receive the praise that endures unto everlasting life while those people are receiving the disrespect of God for all eternity and the disrespect of all godly people.
Let the world mock you and enjoy your bread just like a man who has a servant in a full belly and the people on the outside are mocking him and they're hungry because they don't have the wisdom that man has.
People thrive on praise but make sure it's God's light that's shining through you.
When the wicked praise a fool, what they're doing, they are praising darkness and they're calling it light.
The command means to shine and they're saying that they're shining.
They're saying they're stars.
They're saying they're celebrities.
People we celebrate but they're praising darkness and they're calling it light.
Isaiah chapter 5 verse 20 and we'll close says woe unto them.
I don't want any woe.
I want the blessing.
The Bible says in Isaiah 5 20 woe unto them that call evil good and good evil that put darkness for light.
In this case that would be abhorring for commendation that put darkness for light and light for darkness that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
With that we'll go ahead and close.
Father we thank you so much for your precious word.
I thank you Father that you created us to be commended.
And Father I pray dear Lord God that we will seek your commendation not the world's.
We will hunger and will thirst after righteousness.
That our belly will be full and our face will shine with the glory of God.
We ask it in Jesus wonderful name.
Amen.
